Jared stared directly at Calvin with a questioning look etched on his face.
“This is a message from Bart to you, young man, to you,” Calvin said, his voice a little louder now. “He left you a gift through your time together, and that gift is peace of mind and heart. This gift was something the world could not provide you. His influence, the training and his bringing you up Mount Hamilton, where we were all brought together,” Calvin explained. “Bart gave you as much as he could in the short time he had left on this earth, in order to ensure you would not be troubled or live in fear.”
“Amen,” John murmured.
Jared slowly nodded his head in understanding. It made sense now that Calvin had explained it. Bart had taken him in and prepared him in short order for what he had to face from that day forward. Bart had not left him without a net. He made sure Jared was with good people; whether by accident or design, it didn’t really matter, Jared thought. Tears welled in Jared’s eyes and then rolled out toward the ground.
“I loved him like a father, like a best friend. Without him, Essie and I would both be dead. I only wished you all could have known him longer,” Jared said through the tears. Despite the tears and sadness, his voice was strong and didn’t waver as he spoke.
John looked up, locked eyes with Jared, then nodded his head. He knew all too well what Jared was going through. He’d seen some of America’s most elite killers cry like babies after losing a close friend in battle. It wasn’t something to be embarrassed about, and he certainly wasn’t going to judge Jared for grieving over the loss of a mentor. Now if the computer engineer were still crying in a week, well, then John would have to put his boot in the boy’s ass.
One by one each person in the little group murmured something over the old man’s grave before heading back toward the ranch house until only Jared stood over the mound of dirt and rock. He thought back over the last couple of months after the event and how intensely he’d struggled, trying not to die, until he met Bart.
Jared remembered the abuse Bart had bestowed on him every day and understood now why. Bart was trying to prepare Jared for the abusive world in which he would have to survive. Now was the test. Bart was gone and he would be in charge of his own destiny going forward.
Jared’s head drooped, his chin nearly touching his chest as he quietly wept, tears dropping onto the mound of dirt covering Bart, staining the ground a darker shade of brown. Jared had nothing to leave on the grave, no ring or gadget that might mean something. No headstone bearing words describing Bart’s courageous nature. A new and fresh headstone would only draw attention to themselves and let others know they were surviving nearby. Coming from a world where feelings were publicized, Jared realized he must now express his respect for Bart silently and internally. Jared cocked his head and saw the stains from his tears on the grave and thought this had to be about the most personal thing a person could leave behind. A true remnant of how much the old man meant to Jared. He had cried in despair after the event, but had never cried out of grief until now. Jared recognized he was one of the lucky ones after what he had seen during his travels within the confines of the Bay Area.
After ten minutes, his eyes dried, and he just stood reminiscing about the brief time he and Bart had shared. At about the thirty-minute mark, Jared wiped his face with a dirty sleeve, took a deep breath, and stretched his shoulders as a way of resetting himself. He took one last glance at the grave, then turned back towards the ranch house.
After the intimate funeral was over, John went to man the OP. The OP had been vacated for Bart’s funeral. This posed a measurable threat to the group’s security, but no one wanted to miss their last goodbyes to a man whose impact on all of them was nothing less than profound. John chuckled to himself, thinking if Bart came back to life for just one minute, he would have lost his mind over the fact that the entire group was standing over his grave, crying and blubbering, while the OP was unmanned.
Once he reached the OP, he scanned the surrounding area for a full fifteen minutes before relaxing slightly. Although visibility from the OP was great, the new world was much quieter, which made sound as good or better than sight as an early indicator of danger. John strained his ears, listening to the countryside, which yielded little other than chirping birds and the humming of insects. In the early days after the solar flare, John had found the newfound silence eerie; now he welcomed it. There was a certain level of peace it brought, which helped with the balance of life.
Before the event, law and order brought people peace of mind while they dealt with the constant racket of airplanes overhead, cars on freeways, along with all the other man-made noises that suddenly came to a halt last September. John found he enjoyed the peace and quiet of sitting alone in the OP with nothing other than his thoughts accompanied by sounds, many of which he’d never heard before the lights went out.
Shannon, along with Calvin, took Essie back to the ranch house, where she began working on a reading exercise with the girl. Calvin went into Bart’s old room and stripped it of
